Man stands alone in the universe, a unique product of a long, unconscious, impersonal, material process with unique understanding and potentialities. These he owes to no one but himself, and it is to himself that he is responsible. He is not the creature of uncontrollable and undeterminable forces, but is his own master. He can and must decide and manage his own destiny.
George Gaylord SimpsonSpecies evolve exactly as if they were adapting as best they could to a changing world, and not at all as if they were moving toward a set goal.
George Gaylord SimpsonCertainly paleontologists have found samples of an extremely small fraction, only, of the earth's extinct species, and even for groups that are most readily preserved and found as fossils they can never expect to find more than a fraction.
George Gaylord SimpsonHuman judgment is notoriously fallible and perhaps seldom more so than in facile decisions that a character has no adaptive significance because we do not know the use of it.
George Gaylord SimpsonIt is inherent in any definition of science that statements that cannot be checked by observation are not really saying anything or at least they are not science.
George Gaylord SimpsonMan is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind. He was not planned. He is a state of matter, a form of life, a sort of animal, and a species of the Order Primates, akin nearly or remotely to all of life and indeed to all that is material.
George Gaylord Simpson